


I Told You About The Bench, Bro

by A_Depressing_And_Complicated_Existence



Series: No Guarantee (Of Eveything) [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Death is to be Found, For it is Homestuck, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Misunderstandings, Not yet though, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sburb Still Happens, Self-Insert, The Trolls are Here, This is going to be a glorious trainwreck, no beta we die like idiots, pesterlogs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:13:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26815666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Depressing_And_Complicated_Existence/pseuds/A_Depressing_And_Complicated_Existence
Summary: In a sporadic and detrimental path of extremely bad and continuously worse decisions made by a young man's parents and him, and to his unknowingly dickbag behaviour contributing to the already breaking apart, weakly glued together marriage of his step-paps and Mother in the year 2020 with the plague of Mitch being so minimal in impact to society that it never reached it's infamous effects to the fullest--It spectacularly ends up with him on an airport bench, being told by some delusional hobo to get off it, with his essentials plus Honey Stars and 2 laptops of varying functionality in his stolen backpack, though as tradition, things escalate and naturally, the young man ends up in a place he does not like,very,verymuch.Now he would really like and love it iffucking John Egbert stops yappy-messaging his friends about him ending up on the inside of his room, in the very, very tall house that does not qualify as a house at all.
Relationships: John Egbert & Everyone, Original Male Character & Everyone
Series: No Guarantee (Of Eveything) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1893724
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	1. I Told You ABout The Wwindow, Bro

A very stressed young man stands in his bedroom. It seems that today, the 24th of February, 2020, is the most stressful birthday preparation day in his pointless life. 

Though, since this very stressed young man’s memory is deteriorating since the start of 2018 unbeknownst to his bro and friends, he will be given a name today that he will stamp on his black shirt to remember it well.

==>Enter Name: MCPisssimp Mississipi.

The very stressed young man throws a visible tantrum on his floor bed, stomping on his green pillows at the disgusting and illogical name.

Only dickbags would name their kids that!

==>Enter Name: Jonathan Hale.

...There we go!

The young temper-tantrum prone man finished throwing his tantrum and slinks off the floor bed.

This very stressed young man’s name is Jonathan Hale. It is a name he remembered he loathes and reluctantly uses, especially the Hale part.

Can’t forget the connection to your best bro even if he’s the second middle bro to the first bro, a bro that...never mind. 

==>Jonathan: Forget about the first bro and examine the room.

You indeed, quite literally, forget about the first bro and dilly-dally on with what you were doing, checking out your room one last time before you abscond from your divorced parents, who still apparently live together.

Your room, is just a room. It does not look like trash like the ones your sisters, *cough*, sorry, ex-sisters had a hand in defiling in like some stupid ant colony, and speaking of ant colonies…

Ah-hah! You remember something mildly vital to yourself.

==>Jonathan: Remember what you were interested in the first place.

You were interested in mildly PAINTING, DRAWING and WRITING STORIES that you write to subvert, add and grasp what IRONY was and meant to you. 

Although the dictionary definition was too convoluted to you so you pulled up the hobby from somewhere and started it around a year ago, when your memory was still slick and dandy, and where you could actually follow reading stories from online to books well enough, and your favorite genre of stories were of the "Aliens Think Humans Are Space Orcs".

Those stories were too amusing to pass up.

As for PAINTING and DRAWING, well those two hobbies were just materialized from the desire to exist and be useful and flail around your suburban home for the need to be productive and be harshly denied the grace of good attention and care from any human being that comes in contact with you. Nothing to worry about, clearly.

==>Jonathan: Focus on planning the ABSCOND from your  hi-er, “family”.

So you suddenly do with a hazy 180 in the room and focus your already wavering attention on scrambling around your room for your forgotten, slightly put away “backpack” for the BAXTER and the RED NOTE.

Though you shortly realize that it wasn’t there in the first place and that Sylladexes don’t exist so you can just pull an obscure joke out of your ass. Buh.

You decide to stay still for a moment to try to remember where it ended up….and you become gob smacked with a hurt expression on your face.

And so you feel you have a tear-well coming up for the 2nd time in your life, and by that you meant literally, for you, don’t have the emotional capacity to even consider crying or whining about some minor thing in your life.

But for fuck’s sake, why didn’t you remember that your former parents looted the backpack from your room?!

==>Jonathan: Urgently Youth Roll out of the room and find the backpack.

God fucking damn it, you don’t know what stupid urges are creeping up your stick-like pale elbows, but you will never attempt to YOUTH ROLL in any circumstances even if it’s urgent. 

You’re fairly sure you’d never want to break one of your ribs and almost your weak, and still deteriorating spine that causes you so much pain when you accidentally contort your back wrong. 

Maybe that’s why you have a massive stolen pin board in the right side of your room that almost covered your wide window, it now had some large methodical and very precisely put blood stains on it, because you are quite sure that you’ve run out of markers, pens and pencils to use last week and you’ve decided to deliberately hurt yourself in order to write more in order to remember things.

Plus, this type of thing was beneficial, what’s better than to wake up to seeing methodical and precise blood stains from your body in order to remember? It beats buying things and stealing things from the whining dogs from the cages, and you don’t even remember what they were named by your parents and you. 

A few days later but not quite so, you would be laughing at this from the lack of human interaction, or social interaction and slight isolation, somewhat maniac and still not crying from the TORTURE.

But you would not know that at the current moment, and so you carried on ignorantly of what is to be a foregone conclusion that would come closer each day after you finish ABSCONDING from your “family”.

==>Jonathan: Sneak out of the lightless respi-room and wweigh everything you have done so far.

So you do, and now you have gracefully realized that you are wearing unfit for going out, even you have shame standards when clothes come about.

You mildly pull a quiet tantrum inside your head and hope that nobody witnessed you wearing a custom-made gorgeous wedding gown that strangely fits you, and you stole it from your Mother before she went all...PIGGY. Buh. You shiver from the mere idea of her trying to shove her body into her thin and puffy wedding gown. 

You think you might have saved it from her clutches, the wre-woman. 

You still didn’t dare to call her that even if she wasn’t technically your mother anymore, she was the only person who was mildly interested in your wellbeing but not safety, and though she was very neglectful, it had some benefits to not being noticed like some hermit.

But besides that, you yanked it from her closet while she wasn’t looking some month ago, and it doesn’t look like she needed it, so what was the harm in trying on the dress for an in-joke you would understand?

...a lot, you figure it out the day before you ended up isolated in the CRIMEL.

But, for it is not that day yet, you are still clueless about the forthcoming consequences, and have skittered back to the room, holding up the dress properly without shame.

Now what the hell are you going to do?

==>Jonathan: Change into something more utilitarian, or something not tacky.

Buckwit, Buckwit, now, you had decidedly a few weeks ago accidentally made an imaginary friend that was modelled after someone that didn’t exist, a nice DAD. Better than the two people who were fathers but ultimately failed in it.

But the imaginary friend, well, DAD, is sort of a frenemy to you, and that is how you ended up arguing with something that doesn’t exist about how your fashion sense isn’t tacky at all. Buh. 

You should really stop arguing with yourself.

Anyways, you do you, and so...well.

you ended up throwing out most of the clothes onto the tiled floor out of your MIDDLE-CLASS CONTAINER BOXES and the dress gracefully on the hangar that was on the second NOOSE you owned. 

It was hanging from the still-sparking ceiling light, gracefully.

But, ooo-wee, while you were still arguing with DAD, you had the minor decency to RAMBLE-CHANGE your clothes and ended up not looking too tacky, the DAD’s words, not yours.

It was just a casual outfit, which consists of thee, a cotton-black, dusty 10-year old, black jacket that was fluffed in dog fur that you would really use a lot recently to make up for something you forgot and you doubt it was important, your favorite blue shirt with a faded STOP SIGN logo, gauh, you’d fucking kill anyone who’d ruin this shirt, and then you’d pick the very specific way to die that you’ve been planning since you were six, but of course you’re still missing some materials to do it. Buh.

And then the other slightly less graceful half of your outfit was your..uncomfortably tight high pants. Alright, Alright.

You are coming to a slightly delayed revelation for all these years wearing these pants, and you have decided to not wear these horrifying pants anymore and have decided to chuck them in the about to be stolen backpack for the purpose of condemning them to BURN.

Christ, you feel a shiver down under your neck’s flesh.

==>Jonathan: Make description of clothes followw.

You strangely look in the direction of your massive blood stained pin board as if you had a sudden spark in your head that there is some poetic, important answer to be found. 

Alas, there is none, but you nonetheless continue describing your graceful clothes. 

And with some minor realization that your DAD had absconded to somewhere again, probably to the doggy grave shrine again.

You also realize you have RAMBLE-CHANGED once again, and this time your pants have changed to the more tolerable boy-white shorts with funny spade things all over it because you have a slightly small sense of crude humor, and because spades sort of look like [REDACTED] that every male person has. Hehe.

Oh, and your pink slippers had changed to..your soft mixed purple and violet tie-less nor strapper, sneakers.

Huh.

You were pretty sure these things were downstairs. Under all that hullabaloo in the cranny under the stairs, the one filled with the festering day old human corpse.

==>Jonathan: Finish the clothes change etcetera, and abscond to better plans and such wwahoo.

Hm. You have begun to notice that, well, quite clearly you are feeling more spaced out, subdued and un-individualistic tonight during your planning for the ABSCOND.

You decide to put that doubtful thought later, and so you kneel onto the floor, your high knee striped socks protecting your well, knees, and in a matter of a single hasty minute pick-up, you have picked up most of your clothes that were on the floor and have put almost all of it well, stuffed in the MIDDLE-CLASS CONTAINER BOXES to be accurate.

And your favorite, favorite shirt was almost forgotten, the one purple shirt with Cronus Ampora’s detailed, scum-seeking, desperate, finned handsome face on it and labelled atop his dunk-ass head, “Cronus The Dickbag”.

God you hate that dickbag so much. Sleazy son of a bitch.

You huff, and feel a sudden depressed feeling emanating somewhere.

You are not sure what that was, but you ignore it and feel weirdly relieved and more like YOU, like some very leery purple eyes had disappeared and konked elsewhere. Oh well.

That was strange, but not strange-important enough, so you move on and begin actually doing the plan, instead of delaying it for a RAMBLE-CHANGE and some minor inconveniences that you are pretty sure makes you very hypocritical with your ability to be self-aware and deprecatingly joke about your feeling desperateness and emptiness.

Although you’re hoping you aren’t Cronus Ampora level’s of desperateness, even _Eridan_ wasn’t that fucking desperate for someone.

You are certainly horrified to think about the time, the very real memory, when your real father, drunk as shit with his douchebag comradery with his douche friends, hit on you as if he didn’t know who you were, when you were _**six years old.**_

A memory you’d rather not remember tonight. Don’t want the last memory to be of thinking of your drunk father hitting on you.

_Eurgh_. Aversion to drinking any carbonated drink or juice otherwise, was flowing in your veins, as was of your mother’s half with the Hale within you.

You are slightly feeling a tinge of ginger relief from that thought, quaint feeling otherwise, you'd rather die to being killed than dying to F-Rate Alcohol and to alcoholism. 

Anyways, you soon realize you are now ready to go and hunt down the backpack for your ABSCOND. You’ve been waiting to do this all day, so much so there were butterflies in your stomach from the excitement of escaping this horrid non-existent household.

Somewhere in that tiny world of yours, a leery asshole asks how a young man like you can be so gullible and terrifyingly sad at the same time, but you also do not know that, and so you amicably move on by slowly opening the light blue door to your room and walking into the poorly lit, white hospital-tiled short hallway of your decrepit and old fashioned house.


	2. Why did you take it...bro?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You are the aptly named young man, Jonathan Hale, and you have a concurrent revelation later on, how you have a shitload of unintended baggage from the way you live.
> 
> Although the present you isn't feeling very okay, he is currently feeling very sad, with no one, not even DAD, to talk to and be comforted in feeling safe.
> 
> And you are beginning to think that being friends with someone might be too self-serving and very indulgent of you.

==> Jonatha- _SLA SH!_

Yo- **Jonathan** looks behind and stares at his messy, lightless room full of stolen things one last time, the one he’s lived in for a brief amount of time, to what was equivalent of 13 years, that which he supposed, bitterly, would be the last memory of his home.

It was without a doubt, a sour parting, even though he wasn’t supposed to be sentimental to these types of things because of the tradition of his family, he was seeing the tears welling up in him again.

He sharply shook his head and turned around, walking to **THE MASTER’S BEDROOM** with his tiny, sickly looking right hand put against the right side of the white hallways, and his other one twitching occasionally.

And during that, Jonathan had a nagging rising up around the tips of his fingers, that something had just happened, just something out there, was wrong.

But Jonathan didn’t have time to contemplate on that either.

It was time to do it.

He was going to pull it off, and do it.

He furrowed his thick eyebrows in subdued determination, and crouched.

It was going to happen. No more needless yapping to someone who isn’t there. You don’t even care for the possibility that you’re smarter than most people, you stand equally amongst them, writhing from their apparent and innate stupidity of humanity.

Hm. That was a strangely articulated thought, but whatever.

It’s happening, now or never.

==>Jonathan: Make it happen.

You feel a strange, unsettling, vague wave of intense positivity as you tip-toe to the aluminum door of THE MASTER’S BEDROOM with your spine more or less feeling tolerable pain.

And whilst you hesitate, you silently doubt your existence for a millisecond before placing your right hand on the fingerprint scanner that replaced the doorknob years ago after the BREAK-CEST.

You shiver at your hurtful reminder of that incident, so you decide with good human tact to not mention it right now.

And so, you focus on getting inside, which was a scary and heavy mutilated flower human monstrosity for you right now. Though not literally.

\+ Jonathan: go get the backpack! :B

You meekly tighten your fists at another strange and intensely unsettling burst of positivity, your knuckles becoming white. You are without question or doubt, have no need for this bad positivity, it would….

You shake your head, and have decidedly mixed feelings about doing this as you look over to the bed that your former parents occupy as of the present hour.

They were both...jangling with their long rifles under the blankets again. 

Buh. You’ve never understood the point of them doing this almost every night like a pair of poorly medicated southern wolves from a shoddy f-rate attempt of a zoo.

The only thing it does actually is that it makes you feel more amused at everything than usual. No smirks or smiles of the sort to be found though.

That shit was treason, legally and personally.

God, this is why you love the law. It makes you focus more strength in other things than your facial muscles, like mandatory labor and…

Uh- _oh_. Crackpot bullshit alert.

You turn slowly to look over to the bed, and to much of your strange relief, they were still jangling, and the weird long spade thing and spike ball slipped out of their blankets.

Whew, god that got you nervous, you thought they might try to exile you in your room without anything 2 years ago or even pull you into their weird jangle crackpot thing again, but there was none of that so this was minor good luck to grasp on.

Good luck that lets you avoid being roped into their hurtful jangling again.

You quietly groan and quickly sink closer to the ground like a snake and so you snake-snake your way to the cube chair with the backpack under it.

\+ Do it! D-bro what is this

For a brief second you feel as if some mossy rotten nutella had fallen onto an okay pepperoni pizza slice, but it was too quick for you, yourself, to even notice what bugfuckery was that. You already have the backpack in reach anyways.

So you yank it by the bottom slowly, until it had….almost made you feel you were asphyxiating by your stupidity of letting your lungs be crushed by the heavy blue backpack. Well almost anyways.

It didn’t really matter when the result came out perfectly fine.

It’s a matter of principle.

Or something like that.

You begin to feel some weird fogginess again, like the usual times where you forget about your name and what parents are.

Damn it. Treason-worthy emotions were coming up, so up the backpack went on your face, preventing you from even thinking to smile in a situation like this.

You, after a few still moments of breathing calmly, had decided to slink your ass backwards back to the aluminum door to escape the sex dun-THE MASTER’S BEDROOM. Hmm, yes. Tha-that’s the correct name.

You once again, muster up what is left of your will and slink, slink, buh, buh, crackpot….oh.

You have now escaped the place full of cursed things, that which is also what your parents were...jangling with.

Guerh, no fucking thank you indeed. You really need to socialize with someone and do with the do thing with the backpack.

\+ Jonathan:focus like you're eating super spicy tacos my dude

You ignore whatever strange mish-mash of poor encouragement you are receiving from creeps.

You shakily look behind you and see that with unfortunate timing, your former parents were now sitting up, blankets away, nakey, an-oh.

Oh god. Oh dear god. Oh dear god no.

Why was there a very, very, very tall spadey thing with lot’s and lot’s of spikes?

And why are both of your parents looking at you, all sweaty and something else? Bo-

Shit. they’re moving and you're feeling that putrid uncomfortable feeling again like-

Fuck fuck _fuck **fuck-**_

\+ Jonathan:dude pack your shit, and _**run.**_

Fuck it! 

You’ll do whatever you can to survive right now, and you pick following whatever the hell this role playing creep’s trying to tell you that doesn’t sound like unsettling encouragement for something mundane like a moment ago.

==>Jonathan: Wear the backpack, shove some of your bullshit next case, and fucking abscond. _**Quick**_.

You fucking do so, and in the process of snatching up the Cronus Dickbag shirt and some other miscellaneous items, you see your nakey former parents holding the too tall, too spiky, spady thing with disgustingly static teamwork, closer to you.

You gulped and put the backpack on, absconding down the stairs with the two behind you, attempting to do something with the tall spike sex toy.

You can no longer mask your bluntness of what jangling or fucking sex toys your deranged parents are using and trying to force you to join them, you are tired, stressed, and very finicky tonight.

And you are now reaching for the wooden, decrepit door of your house, it is your salvation to fucking **_ABSCOND._**

Though you pull a quite risky and foolish move, you look behind you quickly and register that they are still naked, holding the large dildo spear at you, and still have intent to turn you into one of them, a fucking degenerate.

You pull the flip finger, and abscond through the door via opening and closing the door quickly as humanly possible.

You do not pause to breathe behind the door like some moron and instead you run away from your house, the absence of dogs clear, seeming like a lucky day for them.

You are feeling oddly drained of emotion at the moment, but you do not care, as you are still not done with the plan yet. It was just the second step.

You are running to the airport, and that was easier to write down than do it.

For now though, you realize judging by the moon, it is 1 AM in the morning, and you are now officially thirteen years old.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok so, this. This chapter was fucking emotionally draining, like shit man.
> 
> And I think I created a way more...worse version shoot-off me by horrible chance.
> 
> This is...just a way more serious chapter than I intended, where I wanted put a “x is pretty sus” type of memes..though it didn’t really work so...yeah.
> 
> I really do like torturing myself with writing this crap, don’t I?


	3. A-Are you alr-alright, bro?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Steppity, Steppity, Step._
> 
> _Jonathan's feeling down and down, 'specially bout the pairs that walk the bridge-_
> 
> _Stiffity, Stiffity, Strip._
> 
> _-he runs into a stranger, a sussy one at that, for he holds a polka bow tie-_
> 
> _Mippity, Moppity, Boo._
> 
> _  
> _-but at least he's got h-_  
> _
> 
> _  
> _Oh .__  
> 

  
==>Jonathan: Bee someone else.  


You cannot be someone else right now, for there is no one that holds the same tragic notion of foregone conclusions and all around dancing and tip-toeing along the lines of each line that cuts the violin string with their destiny.

So much so that there is a need for intervention, not of the happy kind.

And that is fortunate.

  
==>...Continue being Jonathan then.  


You do, and return to the tiring, less than chipper morning of the night in the high bridged road from your neighborhood to the city for the airport, looking at the wayside of it, and see the ever glistening ocean with the lights of the not-so domestic city shining on it.

You see quite a lot of people as you travel on the sidewalk of the high bridged road with the people who chased you long gone and arrested and charged for several things. Most you will never explain.

Some of the people on the high bridged road were idle, aimless travellers with unknown destinations as far as you can see, some of them were oblivious to the people walking past by them and to you too, that which you were glad of, and to your and the last type of people were the ones who were posing on the sidewalks, polite, incredibly warm and free with their body language and to each other.

Showing so much intimate affection with small or large gestures, and through their communicative and flawed eyes to the ones in front of them, to each other, as if they were waiting for the current moment you were in to kiss under the luminescent moonlight and appreciative golden stars of outer space, savoring their happiness.

You feel something that you can’t describe tug at you hard the longer you stare at them and some of the other couples on the way, pausing more than necessary.

Something wet falls down your cheeks, and you’re not sure why you’re trying to feel for whatever is tugging on your heart.

It’s like each time you see a display of free intimate affection on the way, you feel like something important in your life is missing.

And you don’t like not knowing what it is.

So you walk faster and stop staring at the couples, you wipe away the tears on your face, and try to forget about it by looking at the ground, and being shut off in your own mind, so there were no thoughts to occupy your current frame of the next step for the duration of the walk to the airport.

. . .

  
==>Jonathan: Be an eccentric stranger with a bow tie fetish.  


You are now the eccentric stranger with certainly _no_ bow tie fetish in sight, no sir-ry, you do not have that. You only have a slightly peculiar interest in bow ties and the history of it, yes.

Oh, and you’re almost at the airport. That too.

You really need to visit your aunt in Australia to pick her up, and then do another flight to Canada, and pick up your sister there for a family reunion to, ugh, _Texas._

Why did your mother think it was a good idea to have the family reunion in Texas anyways? That place is the burning sun and you do not want to get a tan. You fucking despise tans.

  
==>Do the Choo Choo Train and hump your own Fedora.  


...well, sincerely know you aren’t brain damaged or stupid enough to do either of those things, you speed up, get away from that fraudulent and disgusting idea with your delicate hand on your pretty textile grey fedora and- 

"Motherfucker..”

Aw shitnuggets, you bumped into someone.

You look to the side and see a small sneering and slightly frazzled, pratty and fratty-looking blonde kid with a large backpack and stupid spade boxers.

What the fuck, those aren’t what people wear when they’re going to the airport _or_ in public. It’s like this kid came fresh from a college party.

Which is disturbing to think about, so you don’t.

“Hey fuckwad.” The pratty looking kid said with damn clear disdain.

Oof. Better speak up then. “Oh, uh, sorry. Just walkin’ quick and fast over here, I need ta get ta Australia for mah’ aunt.” ..God damn it you really need to make your stupid accent disappear.

“Uh-huh...inverted agenda then.” _Oof_ , the kid was _cringing_ , but what the hell does he mean by inverted agenda? You don’t have any inverted agendas at all. Except maybe a normal agenda of sabotaging the grey paint supply of the world.

_maybe._

But, this must be some weird kiddy slang for something. Not using drugs hopefully.

“No, not..an inverted agenda, just’a normal dingy family reunion typa’ thing for me.” Screw it, screw this, you can already feel this conversation is turning awkward judging by the look of annoyance on the kid.

“...Kay’ bye.” Oh yes, the kid’s gone and thank god you don’t have to deal with people like that. You’re already fidgety than normal!

You huff in relief and continue on with your busy, busy, stuff and your suitcase. You really hope this attempt at rounding up the other half of your family won’t end in a train wreck in Antarctica.

. . .

  
==>Eccentric Stranger: Be Jonathan.  


. . .

You are...feeling more empty than intended, and even being pretend-annoyed at that guy with the weird accent you are somewhat suspicious of still, it does not quell that strange empty feeling.

Bummer.

But, on the bright side, you’ve finished the second step and you’re now inside the airport, and you’re..just sadly drinking chocolate milk from the carton box, or whatever it’s called, on a random lonely(?) bench in the center of the airport, put in front of one of those almost big decorative plants with some small flowers by the side.

You sigh despondently as you put the half-finished chocolate next to you on the bench, and your hands running through your messy hair.

The last step is to wait, but for how long? You don’t know and you don’t care yet.

You’re stuck in the present of Sad America, and you’re waiting for your bro to come pick you up and go..somewhere.

The ending of the plan doesn’t exactly matter to you anyways, it’s as long as you escape from America and don’t land in some weird death-reverent society, you’ll be surely fine.

Yeah?

_“HEY FRAT BOY!! GET OFF THAT FUCKING BITCHIN’ HAZARD, RIGHT THE FUCK **NOW!!!** ”_

“W-Woah, _Woah_ , hold the handle there, _now_ , we don’t need ta scram, both of us don’t need ta scram, but you, _you_ , **sir** , need ta chill and maybe instead go away instead of this er, kid, and e-uh, me!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These chapters are well, looking shorter than intended, so yeah.
> 
> Not much to say.
> 
> But I'm doing something next. It's not important, but it's really important in another way. :)


	4. Oh god no.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> :)

==>Jonathan: Be the Eccentric Stranger from five minutes ago.

You are now the eccentric stranger from before.

You’ve...been having a stream of shitty bad luck at the airport this day, first it began with geuh, _Texas_ , then there’s this kid who you swear, swears more than the average swear word your aunt says, and then _now_ , you’ve missed your god damned flight.

This was no doubt 100% bullshit that somebody is giving you wrapped in manure-stained gift wrap.

Ugh.

And now you’re just sulking on some random bench, your fedora covering your entire face out of pure regret and anger.

Why does Time even exist?

\+ “Happy Birthdayyy to you! Happy Birthhday to you Happyy Birthday, Happy Birthdayyy, Happy Birthdayyy, tooooo, _youuu!_ ”

Oh hey it’s your flip phone ringing that sad excuse of a song your aunt sings every birthday for your dead father.

==>Eccentric Stranger: Answer The Flip-Phone.

You grab your maroon flip-phone from the tight pocket of your striped black pants, which where you’re pretty sure isn’t where it’s supposed to, but you had to, because your aunt accidentally sewed the original pocket to the pants, closed.

Hah, classic Aunt Mana.

But anyways, the flip-phone can’t wait for you any longer, so you flip it open to the main screen photo of the drawing of some weird blacked out woman with the thinnest pink lines on her body drawn somewhat poorly, framed in a wooden frame your aunt made for your dead father’s drawing.

Man, you really can’t understand why your aunt told you to pick this picture as the main screen photo the moment she made the damned choice to frame this weird drawing your dead father drew.

Was your father some sort of delusional stalker of some random cosplayer or something?

Eugh, whatever.

It already happened anyways.

And speaking of anyways, it seems like you’ve spaced out for a minute there and someone seems to be trying to call you again.

==>Eccentric Stranger: Answer The Unknown Phone Call.

“Yes?”

"Lookie here, Hey _Hotshot~!_ _”_

Oh jesus, _why_. You absolutely hated it when you had to talk to someone you didn't know, and now wasn't the right time because you had almost flinched at the unsettlingly deep mechanic voice that came from your flip-phone, and you know that your flip-phone doesn’t have a feature like that. Oh _christ.._

"What the... _hell_? Who is _this?_ How did you get my god forsaken _**number??**_ ” You are more than a bit trying not to shout everything you say as you always do in the very few phone calls you had and did, barring the phone calls your aunt makes, you whisper your fired-away questions in a strained way like a sensible(?) person of your status.

“Now, now, _Hotshot_ , Ain’t no whisper-shouting here, in our dear convos, butttt any-who, can’t stall the….story can we?”Oh god, what the hell does this douchebag mean? “But, of course, you question that, but that ain’t mattering right now, _Hotshot_ , I gotta go now! Pew pew!!”

W-

…

==>Eccentric Stranger: Shove the Flip-Phone Back Into Your Pocket And Promptly Freak Out.

Y-You do that, immediately, and just….oh god, oh crispy nuggets of Ciya Guayin, you, you aren’t even sure what the hell just happened, and the barely clear thing that leaves you more questions in a coal-full gift sack and more uncomfortable, is that you’re 70% sure there was the sound of something blasting off in the background at the end of that god forbid call, and that this might..ah well, be a person you _know_ using a voice distorter. Or not.

So in summary, you were feeling more than very uncomfortable by your standards, and you do not like being a 27 year old who's more than very uncomfortable about a single random(you hope) phone call tha-oh _christ_.

You also remember that the guy called you “Hotshot”.

Your face distorts in disgust as you are certainly not a hotshot nor an attractive man, you are just a normal, slightly above average writer of a series of ghost hunter escape novels that you didn’t really know what to call it apart from “Ghostscape” and.....writing that was you trying to stop your internal agonization of having too much time on your hands.

But, yes, you are _**very**_ sure after that simple phone call and summary of uncomfortable realization, you are certainly not having a panic attack right now.

Hnnnnngh, nope, nah, you are certainly feeling that the oncoming storm that is your need to stand up and go home to watch something on Netflix and to not instead crash like a computer with a corrupted and infected floppy disk in public.

Oh christ, you re-

_“HEY FRAT BOY!! GET OFF THAT FUCKING BITCHIN’ HAZARD, RIGHT THE FUCK **NOW!!!** ”_

==>Eccentric Stranger: Fall Off The Off The Side Of The The Bench And Try To Help.

You indeed fall off the bench and onto the floor with the precision of being dropped like a sack of carrots, which is the equivalent of garbage, and the accidental obliteration of one of your lower ribs being the cost with poor positioning and your dimwitted sputtering. Ouch.

But, right now, even though there is barely any adrenalin running through your veins, you stand up with your right hand placed onto where the obliteration was done, unintentionally making you look cooler as you walk slightly closer, and see two people.

One of whom you see is clearly the kid with no decency to wear pants and the other who you do not know at all, but you’re pretty sure this is a White-Black Scenario, with the hobo guy with weird red eyes telling the kid, to well, get the fuck off the “bitchin’ hazard” and so, with the reminder that you are still a coward of a pacifist, you place your free, numbed, hand on the shoulder of the fratty-looking kid.

And so you speak with zero confidence and your legs essentially being vibrating pudding the whole time.

“W-Woah, _Woah_ , hold the handle there, _now_ , we don’t need ta scram, both of us don’t need ta scram, but you, _you_ , sir, need ta chill and maybe instead go away instead of this er, kid, and e-uh, me!”

The hobo guy growled. Fucking shitnuggets, why.

_“FUCKING SHITHEADS, BOTH OF YOU GET THE **FUCK** AWAY FROM THAT _FUCKING_ HAZARD, I FUCKING REMIND YOU THAT **SHITTY** THING CAUSES SHENANIGANS, YOU **DUMBFUCKS!!** ”_

Oh _fucknuggets_ , a crowd was gathering around the three of you already without your notice, and under your inept ability to not stand there like a mannequin, you hesitantly rebel against the hobo guy’s warning by sitting down on the bench, next to the kid, and blurting out words that would make your aunt incredibly proud of you, but make her feel the cringe coming from you.

“How, H-How about, _no?_ Because you, sir, are a hobo, and we, the three of us, have different statuses in society by virtue and a sheer-ass amount of money made via legal processes, and you are possibly the lowest of the three, and so you have _no_ power nor authority ta tell us to get off this damned bench and fuck off. So would you mind to fuck off this instant, or would you instead prefer being dragged off by _security_ , _**sir?**_ ” You gasp out the final words-

-and watch as the hobo guy, and just about everybody in the medium-sized crowd, look speechless.

Just, being almost. 

As it seemed like forever had passed, one weirdly colored person in a black shirt came up front on the edge of the crowd and started taking pictures with their phone looking awfully covered in grey crusty paint (absolutely _disgusting_ ), and their mouth in the shape of an ‘o’. 

Within a matter of seconds, a few people had taken up their phones of different kinds and started taking pictures of you and the kid, to which lead you to the conclusion: no conclusion. 

You are as much confused as with the kid too(?), although his reaction was more or less being unsettlingly blank due to how the kid was wearing a flowery looking pink mask.

And you can’t even tell anything from the eyes, because they’re just….sort of like the eyes cats have, the empty eyes and that….just, damn it, never mind.

Grimacing at that, you try to shoo the inactive crowd away with your free hand, and to your empty relief, the crowd dissipates after a minute, and the whispering of some rather grouchy old people disappear and the hobo had disappeared...off to somewhere.

Hahhhh, man, if this keeps happening to you, you’re going to go koo-koo because of this.

You shake your head.

==>Eccentric Stranger: Be Jonathan.

You….are feeling only, _slightly_ peeved at what this already suspicious stranger did, and adding onto your suspicion was the speech and the save, oh yes, the speech and the save.

The short speech was just like one of those cheesy, supposed to be badass speeches fuckwits say on most of the obscure films you’d find stacked under a lot of pirated anime videos your oldest brother watched when he was a DOTA addicted teenager, and that was a horrible time.

But then, oh man, the save. 

You can’t even, just, why, _why_ did he do that, if somebody said “human decency” to you, no, just no. Even when you believe in human decency existing somewhere, it’s fucking non-existent where you live, and even more non-existent if it’s demonstrated by some _random_ guy.

The only person you’d consider decent was your middle second brother, the best person to exist, but even he had half the shred of decency you’d see in people from other cities, and his career wasn’t agreed to be good by your parents and even by _you_ from an outsider perspective.

Being a rapper won’t solve dropping out of school after all, and the only thing you’d consider okay was him selling selling branded shirts with his narcissistic face on it, and his stupid torso tattoo of a stupid bullet shield..

Ugh, nevermind, you’d rather not continue that off the walls train of thought on this god-forbid escape day.

==>Jonathan: Tell the stranger.

Huh..yeah right.

It was time to tell the guy, straight to his face, on how fucking suspicious he was from your point of view.

So, with a turn of your head and snappy sound, you spoke muffled as you looked straight into the goddamn suspicious man's startled eyes.

“That,” Your eyes narrowed at the man. “Was a low blow.”

The man froze, and quickly his expression had turned into disbelief and confusion. “ _What?_ ”

Pfft, disbelief and confusion? That’s probably fake as shit, and it only makes your suspicion rise and be confusing. “I mean you’re speech is a fucking low-blow to poor and homeless people, and saving me is a stupid move, you dumb fuck.”

The man flinched. “Well, then uh, I didn’t mean ta do that, i-it just sort of happened, instinct y-you know?” He shrugged nervously.

You just sort of hmmmmed at that. “That sounds incredibly sus to me, but I’ll...accept that.” For now. You’re just tired of talking.

You really wish you could just go full-on mute with no way to speak so you could just go do what you do and not deal with talking with people.

==>Jonathan: Crickets.

…

You slouch and bite your lips, looking down on your stick-like pale hands, the sleeves of your jacket barely covering the damage you’d done.

The man beside you was out of your view once you’d turned away in a temporary acceptance of the current situation you’re in.  
You hope waiting for your brother and completing the plan isn’t going to be a ruse your brother conspired with your parents, because you’re just drifting in life, a finite one, and one that is ultimately futile once you die.

It’s anti-climatic, once you die, all your accomplishments are useless, everything ends, the universe ends, and you end.

But, you’re ultimately fine with dea-”Thomas Cartel.”

..Turning your head in an announcement of what the fuck at what the ma-Thomas said. you grimaced. “God damn, _why?_ ”

“Why not?” Thomas smiled lightly. Fuckwit.

You groaned and slouched even more on the bench, full of contempt. 

“You..fuckwit, _fine!_ Jonathan Hale _here_ , _there_ , **_done!_** ” For fuck’s sake.

Thomas chuckled(?) at that. What a fucking bastard.

==>Jonathan: Be ???.

You are now the ???.

==>???: Transport Two Unknown Organic Entities to [REDACTED].

Jonathan, was rather frustrated at the rather obvious idiocy next to him, and shoved his own face into his jacket, scratching up his already broken nose and causing him to complain about it in simple murmurs.

Thomas, while he looked mostly nervous and joking on the outside, he was no doubt, deathly afraid of the kid next to him, and very much concerned about him at the same time, seeing that Jonathan sounded like one of those textbook examples of troubled fictional kids.

Thomas twiddled with his fingers out of realization and a moment of “oh fuck” once he had realized that he forgot about the whole family reunion shenanigan. And that he missed the flight a moment ago.

Oh man, what the hell was he supposed to do now? Back out? He can’t do tha-

_ SHINK! _

Oof!

“ _FffFFfFUCK!!_ ” Jonathan shouted as he tightly held onto the bench’s seat handle, almost falling off the bench due to the sudden shift in well, everything.

“ _AaAHHhHhHhH **HHHHHH!**!_” Thomas was more or less hugging the other bench handle with one of his arms, and he had balled up his lovely fedora quickly and just shoved it into his shirt because there was no time to do fancy.

Everything had gone off the handle, and more precisely the bench had gone and upped from the airport roughly, as it was nailed and screwed down onto the ground of the airport with steel nearing a decade, and everything in the two’s view had slowed down like some sort of VR game or cassette tape.

The people, old, youthful and the between were immediately gone too, as the surroundings had more or less changed into pure nothingness, and the bench started turning to dull grey steel and fragmented reinforced glass with it’s handles, causing Jonathan’s hands to bleed.

And much to Jonathan’s horror, he sees his carton of chocolate milk flinging off the bench and disintegrating into the void.

There were no appropriate exclamations for him to make for it, and as such, he simply screamed until his throat was dry, as the bench continued to move..somewhere, Thomas looked nauseated and had an utterly unpleasant feeling, well, since the beginning when the whole hobo ordeal had happened; things weren’t going so well.

And now Thomas really wanted to not vomit and potentially stain his favorite suit, because his vision was getting blurry and his head had a bit of doozy headache.

And to their conclusions, whilst where mostly very far apart for the reasoning, they both concluded when they finally couldn’t scream any more and they could see light down below them, they either both died of some bizarre accident, or this was a case of truth and reality had betrayed them.

Jonathan had gone for the latter, for if it is happening in the present, and if he could verify the feeling of being terrified, then yes.

Being terrified in this specific circumstance was the correct reaction.

==>???: Be Jonathan Hale.   
Jonathan: Pass out.


	5. The following title transmissions from [REDACTED] have been ceased, for [REDACTED] was to be found to be expired next to a taken for examination tape recording and a photo of a small unknown blonde child of undetermined origins with teeth deformations.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Investigation is pending.

==>Jonathan Hale: Be Thomas Cartel.

Fuck. You can’t pinpoint what really happened right now, you can only hear ringing in your ears, your eyes are cross eyed, blurry, your nose broken and most likely broken, you can feel your chest is constricting. 

You can’t breathe well.

...something is stopping you from breathing, standing up, and stabilizing yourself. Shit.

You dearly hope it’s just that kid sleeping and not some horrific and annihilated human remains of him. It’d give you too much writing material.

And even if the kid from your point of view was rude and a sweary one, it was undoubtedly sad for the parents, for them to find their child gone, gone from existence, and it would be you, the only witness and possible suspect.

..So many, there are so _many_ opportunities of using this specific sequence of events as writing material that it makes you giddier than you usually are, and it’s a rare moment, an exquisite one to behold.

But now isn’t exactly the time to go too deep into your consciousness and switch with _him_ , it’s too dangerous to do it, and you’re going to try and figure out what’s happening anyway. 

Science isn’t exactly useful for this type of situation anyways.

Besides, you were lucky enough to only open your eyes once you were past the light and here, and the rest was you covering your eyes and grimacing for a long time from a lot of things and trying to wait out the ringing and blurring of everything.

Which was a time and tested solution of definite failure.

God damn it.

==>Thomas: Open your eyes.

Thomas hissed.

...he really wished he hadn’t tucked away his fedora, it would have significantly helped him from his quite damning predicament.

The least subtle things he noticed right now were that there was some sort of green blur sort of moving fast in a panicky manner to the left, probably a person, the next was that something had fallen off or broken off from where he was, most likely and unfortunately the bench or the kid.

And third he could feel something sharp digging into his knees and lower torso, it was glass, no further investigation was needed.

And fucking fuck, it’s as painful as getting stabbed in the hands by firework powered prank rakes, and those weren’t very fun for the two of them.

Though, maybe, just _maybe _, he should have suffocated from the curtain before everything and high school.__

____

__

But he wouldn’t have been able to make the books that were his magnum opus, and his other half wouldn't have made a _curious_ amount of money working with the local police, in a tasteful and unfortunately expensive disguise to separate him and them.

Hm. Whatever, he didn’t need to think about _that_ right now, but what is to think about right now is whether he should stand up and yank out the glass shard and bleed to death or just wait and die pathetically on a bench.

Neither of those were viable options unfortunately.

Although something sound was bugging him, like there was some sort of computer buzzing near him. It almost sounded like a human being.

“...” Yeah. Just like buzzing.

“..!” Humming?

“...llo!?” Nevermind, it was actually the person from before. Concerned likely.

He can’t talk back though, it’s like his mouth was sewn shut like a teddy bear, and it leads to him to think, well _then _, he’s most likely starting to hallucinate. Or either his jaw broke from the impact of the bench.__

____

____

Both of those are likely, and the former sounds better than the latter.

“.. _ello?!_ ” Thomas blinked slowly, his vision being less blurrier than before, and he was certainly right, it was a person, though not a man, a child, shorter than him, dressed in an eye-hurting lime suit with glasses that have no business not being connected and with extreme paint-bucket white colored skin that no human being would have in reality.

An English speaking alien then, Thomas supposed at that moment.

“ _Mister!?_ Are you okay? _Oh man!_ There’s a _lot_ of blood, _oh **no!!**_ ”

“Thomas winced” as he slowly opened his mouth to speak, only to end up with his voice dry as a power-cleaned floor tile and a taste of iron left in his mouth. “P’nful, Ob’usly. I n’ed m’dical ‘tention. ‘lass sh’rd in t’e lo’er ‘orso ‘en ‘ees.”

The alien child stilled and panicked more and more, running in a left to right pattern, repetitively.

“Thomas” rather _hoped_ that someone else capable rather than this...child appeared. At least then he could properly communicate with a calm person that didn’t have the need to be rather pani-

“ _ **HhHhHhhHhHHH-**_ ” O, fire and the brimstones of hell, how brain damaged is this alien? Because the child, the fiery be damned alien did it.

The alien pulled out the glass shard in a vain attempt of trying to help him. The least desirable outcome of all time in this current situation.

 _Shit_. No wonder Thomas switched with him.

==>”Thomas”:Just Die.

Fuck it, eveything might as well end and be anti-climatic if he dies with Thomas an-oh, oh...that, that would be a catastrophic situation of debauchery waiting to happen for him.

Dagnabbit.

“Thomas” lifted up both his rigid arms in the air and extended his injured legs carefully and diagonally onto the ground until the tip of “his” shoes were there, and as such he sprang up like a flamingo-

-and there he stood upon the ground, injured, still, and menacingly in front of the frightened alien child, with sharp blue eyes and his bleeding lips in a thin line of contempt directed at most of humanity.

His dignity had to be put aside, for the only way he knew how to stand up in such awful conditions and disgustingly cheap peasant clothes was this.

“I tol’ you to g’t m’ m’dical _at’ention_ , **child.** ” He sourly repeated, for he knew that he won’t be able to stand in this disgraceful position for longer than 10 minutes, and adding more time and suspense was futile and unne-dagnabbit, fucking dagnabbit.

The alien child ran away. He fucking ran away.

But _wait_ , “he’s” supposed to be the smart half, so he supposed that the alien could and might have done the right thing of calling someone to help.

Possibly. There’s a two point zero thirteenth chance the alien ran away to abandon them and let them rot away in some rather unsettlingly paper white small room full of blurred mediocre room decorations too.

_ **sBhUrrJ-!** _

“oH mY motheRfucKing bitch. Japanese Hotel Satanists with my 7th Grade classmate secretary sitting on my lap and then I got kidnapped.” a neutral pitched voice gasped out lower and beside “Thomas” in cold sweat.

“Thomas” turned his head and his head bobbed a little as his eyebrows raised at the word vomit of nonsense. Nightmare then.

It was another child, fetal position and a small blood puddle was forming around the head and one of the wrists was cut, glass again likely, old black jacket, rather used, no pants, strange, exposed legs with smeared blood, the child was smaller, looks malnourished and neglected, aroun-sweet _excellency_ , a 4’7, most certainly a 7 year old. 

Well this was quite a brand new experience to label curse worthy for him to put up on reddit next to the John Adams Incident, but-

What the hell was Thomas doing _here_? Did he go to the wine cellar again? He should have banned him from it yesterday. Fucking snake.

“Hey fucknut.” He blinked. Right, he was staring too long at the boy.

“Right, yes, not sorry, what is it?” “Thomas” said quickly in his rather natural sounding british accent, well that is to himself. 

He was unnerved, clearly enough. Different accent entirely for him.

The boy winced quite a lot during as he sat up and stood up from the wreckage of what was previously a glass bench of terrible design, patting the back of his jacket with his left un-injured yet bloody hand, his right going through his messy hair with the shakiness and the fragility of a snowflake.

The boy took a breath. “Flamingo Posing is not going to help do whatever the fuck you’re trying to do in this...” He looked around the white room, with dry eyes wide in awe and recognition. “..place.”

Interesting. 

“Thomas” hummed. “and?”

“Shhhhhh.” The boy shushed “Thomas” with his index finger shoved at his face. 

The boy began to walk up to the second window of the room from the middle to the left where the blue sky normally lights, but there was none, “Thomas” realized.

“Holy _shit._ ” The blonde boy exclaimed as he peered through the window, that of which “Thomas” could not see from where he was, since he was still standing in the same position from when he stood up minutes ago, injuries numb and somewhat forgotten.

“This is just fucking indescribable, like, fuck man.” The boy bit his dry lips as he continued to peer outside the small framed foreign window, unlike the metal barred windows of his. 

“This- alright I need to…” His loud hoarse voice dwindled into a whisper and “Thomas” had his eyebrows raised once more in a strange sense of twisted amusement at the boy, who had removed his garish pink mask off his face.

The boy had deformed teeth that resembled that of a rabbit and of a dog with the lower teeth of the middle left and right being fang-like, dirty too, the boy’s gums deteriorating, and bad breath, it seems probable that this person never had his teeth straightened nor had they ever visited the dentist.

Although this _does_ explain _something_.

“Hoooo-my god, this is the best air I have _ever_ breathed and-” He blinked. “Holy shit right, fuck, I, forgot about the most important thing like, shit.” 

The boy’s small smile flipped to a frown as he murmured something intelligible from “Thomas’s” point of view.

==>”Thomas”: Be the blonde boy.

You are now the blond boy with the name Jonathan Hale, and you’re currently having a fucking blast of awe going through you.

Though that sort of got overshadowed by, well, the plan being thrown out of the window, into the saw grinder, grinded into thin pieces, burnt to a crisp by a flamethrower, and eaten by a black bear.

All in all though, you had to say everything is most, amazingly, fine.

Although Tom- _you decided Thomas was too long_ \- was acting _very_ out of character like an entirely new person, sort of like Markiplier’s Darkiplier, but not...the evil and manipulative sort.

Yeah. Not a great comparison. Tom’s more like a brain-damaged fool, the same sort you are.

But anyways, a i r .

Oh sweet mother of jesus, the air is _fresh_ , it doesn’t smell like ant-corpse covered water and the strange smelling minty shampoo your brother uses like your room, and the most best and fucking startling thing of all is that well.

You’re in a room, a quite specific one, the one room that let a story start.

John’s room.

THAT’s right. Fucking _Homestuck._

It’s...a mildly okay story since it was from the late 2000s and around 2016-2017. You hadn’t had the chance nor the money to buy any games it generated, you could only watch people play them with jealousy.

Although you very much avoided the epilogues and read the ^2 with a lot of disdain.  
Since apparently sequel-itis was still in effect, and Hussie was an e-boy.

But, the things that kept your interest in homestuck afloat was the incredible abundance of memes and fanart, funny misunderstanding and culture shock fics of it, and especially that one post of a sighting of Lil’ Cal hanging in a school, sighted by a guy dressed in a Dave Strider shirt.

God that shit was funny.

And following on to your daydream staring outside of the window, you were almost ready to kick something out of sheer giddiness and excitement.

Almost being the keyword because you’ve smeared blood on your hair, and your clothing is pretty much covered in blood.

Oh, and you’re bleeding from your right wrist, you think anyways.

You sort of missed the chance to drink the whole carton of chocolate milk too. That was a shame.

And then here comes the bringer of regret, your strange mistake of sitting on the goddamn bench. 

You..should’ve listened, but there was no fucking time fo-

“Uhh, Hi, mister, again, and..huh?” Hold the phone. 

There’s nobody else here apart from Sir Flamingo Poser and you..unless?

==>Jonathan: Turn aroundddd.

With a minor feeling of haziness and a numb feeling still crawling around your body, you turn arrounddd and face the man, er, boy.

..

…

Holy- Milk man John Egbert confirmed. He’s a 100% natural milk man with glasses...Goddamnit to _hell_ though, he’s a tall fucking milk man _too._

“..Hi?” John awkwardly waved his free hand, his god damned amazing hammer in the latter. 

You waved at him in awe, covering your mouth with your blood dripping right hand to hide your..quite damning problem as you smiled instead with your eyes even though you’re very much injured and you aren’t usually _this_ resilient from dying fast as very ill humans are supposed to be. 

Must be Homestuck Shenanigans then. 

Butttt, First Convo with John fucking Egbert! 

==>Jonathan: TALKKKK.

And that starts with you skedaddling closer to John, completely ignorant of what Tom is doing and of John flinching in surprise.

You shake his hands and chuckle a bit like Spongebob had with a strange cheery rush you haven’t had since you were 4.“Hehe! I-I’m a big, _big_ fan of you John, you wholesome _b e a n_ , I’m actually very honored, incredibly _honored_ to meet you, even though it’s-” 

You glance back at the wrecked remains of the bench and return your gaze at John, who was looking frazzled and had an indescribable expression on his sweet, sweet face. “-in unfortunate circumstances, It’s a chance meeting for me and uh, since I can’t well-” You chuckled again. 

“-Ask for your autograph with no pen and paper, Can I uh, get a _hug?Please??_ ” You almost managed to smile fully, but you can’t. Can’t get the risk of revealing the teeth really, especially in front of glass bean here.

John blushed and-oh holy _god_ he is the most wholesome bean you’ve seen and now met, dear **god**. “U-Uh, sure!”

You blinked. Permission to hug answered by the holy bean? Yes.

==>Jonathan: Do Hug-Hug with the bean. 

You raise both of your arms, the former bloodier, but that doesn’t matter.

It is hug-hug time, and you don’t give a shit apart from hugging the sweetest and wholesome bean ever to live, like jello.

You could _really_ do this forever and maybe do a buzzfeed supernatural marathon with him and eat popcorn and then hug more and then share coffee and-

==>Jonathan: Die from blood loss.

You have died.

==>Jonathan: Be “Thomas”.

You cannot be “Thomas” either, for he had fallen asleep in boredom, staying still in the flamingo pose for more than the recommended need to never go higher than 10 minutes.

Although you may be John Egbert, the currently very confused child.

…

Just kidding of course, you can’t.

_..Unless?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh god I don't know how John came out here, hopefully in-character.
> 
> It's been months since I finished reading homestuck and the still in progress and slightly despised ^2.
> 
> yeah oof.


	6. Reset is Imminent

==>Jonathan: Be ”Thomas”.

You _are_ “Thomas”, but more accurately and less de-individualizing, you are Reginald C.H Holmes, Thomas’s brother of...some sort.

You are _quite_ sure that you’re technically older than him memory-wise, but you don’t have the time to tell him that to his face in the journal, preferably because both of you might die.

And being that you’re in pain, so much _more_ pain than before, and that chest of yours is feeling constricted, you aren’t keen on that happening. 

It would have been likely though that it might’ve happened for your wussy brother if you hadn’t clicked in, but right now-

-You can’t make use of your 5 senses at _all_ , and-

Oh.

_Oh._

Jackals, did you go back to square one again? Is this like that one ruddy time loop film Thomas talked about so much in one of the tapes?

Fuck, while you certainly aren’t a tedious of sci-fi and Doctor Who, purely because of the plot holes and stupid things people would do for screwing up history and “fun”, you’re not going to refute that you definitively know and can’t forget at all with your perfect memory that you were in this tritafect-forsaken room, meeting a white humanoid alien.

And you’re sure you’ve seen that 7 year old standing up from the frankly strange fiffied wreckage of a poorly designed bench.

That...also doesn’t make sense to you. The child should’ve died from the blood loss and some other factors to count from 1 to 7 with your fingers.

..Frankly, it looks like you’re living in an illogical nightmare right now.

Shucks. And you’re at Toys R’ Us, probably because you did something wrong.

But, at the moment, you’re _going_ to stand up normally and escape the alien’s room, no point in bleeding to death with a bucket of regret. ( _-and you, **you** as a merciful savior of some random **child?** Ha. To a decaying boot shall that thought be thrown into._)

And this begins with you not thinking about anything, your classic strategy. It always works for you. ( _ ~~Most cases, most cases /b/.~~_ )

==>Reginald: Escape.

You stood up, careful to not cause more blood to seep out of your wounds, and consequently, you walked to the frighteningly blank door, not getting distracted by the multitude of things that was _wrong_ in this wretched room with oil and scratched up posters, and you notice the strange tilted poster of a green split house logo with a title- “Sburb Beta.”

Strange title for a thing, but it’s not going to be useful to you right now.

You forget it immediately after seeing it as you turned the pitch black door knob.

The door suspiciously creaks as you leave, and you find yourself standing in the hallway with a stairway (With no _rails_. _Outrageous!_ ) to downstairs to what was a white, white living room.

Was, being the operative word.

The room was filled to the brim by oily-looking gremlins with clowning attire of oddly normal clown shoes, hats of green, red and purple being prominent, and light green, the most disgusting color of the human color spectrum, being rare. ( _Thank no one for that!_ )

There was also, _thankfully_ , some colorful paintings of jesters and other things on the wall. 

That wasn’t _quite_ as important in the ticking minute of your escape, but you were offered a chance to lighten up your non-existent, metaphorical heart, and you took it with a quiet sigh as you puzzled out a way to avoid the oily clown gremlins.

You were a “pacifist” after all. Those tales of explicit violence you whispered to your brother with the antique recorder every night a queer moon crack ago was all a lie anyways, and it was for the purpose for him to be afraid of it and for you to survive.

( _ ~~And to stop him from butting heads with the utter sociopath that was your older brother~~_.)

Though, unfortunately, with the obviousness of you being a pacifist, you don’t own any weapons with a license.

Although you can testify that having a taser in one of your pockets does count as a weapon with a license, and it’s your brother’s.

And you’re definitely going to utilize it by stabbing the shit out of these, frankly, terrible representations of classic gremlins with the power of...electricity.

Hm. Yes.

==>Reginald: (S) Strife.

You began with a right kick to the fire-be-damned first oily gremlin on the staircase, and to the next was a pop and a quiet _**shink**_ from one of the pockets of your coat and as you held the gremlin by the head with your spiked shoes, you gave a stab to one of the white eyes of the clowny gremlin with the taser on, causing it to convulse in pain and..

...It was white no more, and it made your delicate fingers shiver in some strange shoot-off of serotonin that made you hunger for more.

The other _gremlins_ stared at you as your next course of action was pursing your lips.

So be it, indeed.

So, you made your way amongst them with a kick, a stab to the eye, left or right, and a poof at the end with curious things that looked like candy.

You gladly scooped them all up with no idea of what they were and what they did, but you had half a moon crack to reason that strange things tended to be important.

Notwithstanding though, every time you did it with the end of one of those knock-off gremlins, your pockets felt the same.

Lightweight with a couple of jingles in your penny wallet, and nothing was coming up and when you tried to feel for what you picked up.

It was intriguing to you, and it was a rabbit hole that might be worth falling into, but you’re still stuck in the rhythm of kicks, stabs, occasional timed tasering, and jingling from your pockets.

It's almost like you were the pianist of your college band again. 

**_HNCK-!_ **

Like you were playing quick and loose with Gerald’s rhythmic drumming.

**SHOOPE-!**

Like the days when you were messing around with your instruments with Shane, using your brother's tambourine as the target for Shawn’s frankly shitty dart accuracy and ending up being scolded by Davey (Oh god, **_Davey_**.) for almost getting darted in the head multiple times, with Izaiah and Jim the Annoying, laughing at your predicament

**_FRING--!_ **

Like you were on the stage with them, performing the best song Jim and Davey ever made in that time for the whole band to perform in front of almost everyone at college, and although your band didn’t win the contest-

-it made everyone in the band cheer for the great joy you and everyone else had.

**_cHink--!!_ **

And then everything beautiful in life shattered to pieces when Davey found drugs you weren’t aware of tucked inside your backpack one hazy night of drinks and a rendezvous you had with him after finally fessing up to him a day before, back then.

Both of you broke up the next day then, and everything spiraled out of control for the both of you.

And...that spiraling is a thing of the past.

Right no- _oh_. Huh.

You’ve already eliminated the threat..a bit too much.

Your final kill was being stomped to death right now by your spiked shoes that were completely covered in black blood (?) and your blood-splashed taser had eventually run out of batteries after the last few kills, all in all, everything you were wearing right now was covered in black blood (?) and the place was slathered and splattered with it.

You winced slightly once you took one last look at it’s graphic remains as you lifted up your foot from it.

it was so graphic, so much so they’re pixelated somehow here.

Dagnabbit, you should have been used to seeing beaten up remains and corpses by now, even if they’re pixelated.

==>Reginald: Pick up the Loot.

You sighed at your own ridiculous plight and kneeled onto the floor, picking up all the blue and purple crystals as- _Hm._

Why the finicky fuck was there blue glowing biscuits on table here?

Hm..it’s..it’s not like anyone would miss 4 of them right?

Mm, you snatched 4 of the alien biscuits and ate one quickly before you leaaaaped right _up_ when you heard a peep behind you.

Jackals.

You turned a 90 and saw a familiar alien.

This time though, thanks to _nobody_ , the alien wasn’t paying attention to you at all. Their glasses(?) were apparently supremely high quality technology- (You still _refuse_ to say it as Hi-tech, simply because of Sherly.) 

-because you could see text and some other things going on inside of the things.

Though, to no chance at all, they didn’t still take notice that their home was splashed, scratched, and a bit singed around the nooks and crannies of the living room with small sparks of occasional electricity and lots and lots of black blood (?) to be seen.

You decide to eat another blue biscuit. 

Purely for two reasons, to see whether the alien was going to notice you eating his food, and to see if it was giving you a placebo effect, because when you ate it a moment ago it-

-It made your wounds a little more gone, but there was a growing headache the queer moment you woke up in this fire-be damned time loop(?).

You sigh and finish the second blue glowing absolutely delicious biscuit.

You hope your sense of humour doesn’t deteriorate to the point of you only making tea fetish jokes during this.

==>Reginald: Center, Spotlight, Action!

You coughed into your hand as soon as the alien had stopped doing whatever dull thing they did and blinked when they saw you standing, tall, slightly tense and mildly intimidating, in the far off middle of the blood soaked living room with a bloody taser.

You’re a little relieved that you’re not counted as a murderer right now.

“..May I…” You paused and glanced back at the plethora of blue glowing biscuits on the table before pointing at them. “..eat those?”

“Uhhhhhhh.” The alien blinked again, nervous. “..yeah?”

You don’t smile, you don’t nod, but you do an okay sign at them as a distant thank you. ( ~~And as a big in-joke to yourself.~~ )

The alien looked more or less worried now and went back to doing..whatever preposterous thing they did with their peculiar glasses(?). You wondered _why._

But today, of the current day, you’re on the goal of taking more of those biscuits, now with permission.

Since while you had the small interaction with the queer alien, you’ve confirmed your suspicion that the biscuits did _indeed_ heal most of your wounds. Notwithstanding the loss of blood unfortunately.

And the headache too, it was getting more...more.

You can’t describe it well enough, terrifying. 

You’re desperately hoping it’s not a concussion. ( ~~You don’t want to merge.~~ )

You coughed to erase those dangerous, dangerous thoughts from your mind, and turned around, back to the stack of alien biscuits with a limp in your right leg.

==>Reginald: Rest.

You sat down on the blood splattered couch and grunted, reaching for one of the alien biscuits on the right and taking a small bitey snap out of them like a chip.

The alien was still doing whatever preposterous fiffy things they did with their glasses, probably communicating with their acquaintances, judging by their worry switching to nervousness and to concern with a gasp.

You took another biscuit from the biscuit pile and bit into it.

You start to hum the messy, messy theme you knew as a child, the one about the outreaching mystery of the void and the stolen photo album, the one that spoke about the book and show’s universe.

It was the best thing you’ve stumbled upon, next to the album about deteriorating memory when you were six.

It was, indeed, part of what led you to asking your..Father for something.

. . . .

..Yes, you could probably pair these wonderful biscuits with evaporated milk. That would be great. _Later._

The only things you’re going to do right now is eat the cookies, heal, and rest.

Uh huh.

So you tuned out, lessening your awareness of your environment and what the alien was doing, being more or less a blur.

Your eyes became a tiny bit shut once you slumped lower and lower off the couch and stopped eating the fire-be damned biscuits.

( ~~You hope the headache goes away.)~~

~~~~

You fell asleep. Arms haphazardly placed, lazily and undefended.

Peace.

==>Reginald: (S) 5 S.O.G

Apparently, sleep was not as peaceful as you intended.

You wanted to dream a normal dream even if it was illogical as any other type of dream.

But waking up in an impossibly fitting and too grand of a purple costume with a crescent moon and spooning a pillow was not hoped for when you fell asleep.

This is definitely a hallucination due to a lack of sleep and an effect of exhaustion and the damned headache, you desperately deduce.

It seems that trying to sleep again is no longer an option unfortunately.

It could lead you through another hallucination, so you leaped off the relatively normal bed and found that the room you woke up in was almost identical to the flat you tended to screw around in with cases when you switched with Thomas.

The walls were birch-colored here, not maroon colored, and the mirrors you owned weren't here.

...Right now, sadly, is not the time for you to nitpick on how exact your hallucination’s recreation of your flat was, because you had just noticed, there was an arched window beside your bed.

You approached it casually and saw what was approximately a real life location patched up with other real life locations you are sure you either saw or visited, being absolutely, _purple_ with weird shoot-offs of black stick figures in the same clown outfits the gremlins you murdered wore, toddling around stupidly.

It was like somebody messed with the locations, ripped, patched it up in photo-shop and made it stupid. 

**_HisSSSS-!_ **

You jumped a 180 and saw the slithering, hissing green snake twirling around the lava lamp on your night table. It was Perry.

He’s a bit cartoonish and the horror it would have induced was redundant to you, given that you were already familiar with Perry.

You tell Perry to piss off as you diagonally diddled right over to your mahogany desk and sat down on the comfy cushioned chair with a yawn and a flip of your maroon laptop, yo-

You blink. Somebody had hacked into your laptop.

At least they didn’t screw with your files.

The only thing they did was add two joke programs on your desktop called Sburb and Pesterchum, one of them the same thing on the poster at the alien’s home, the other one strange and simple enough you just had to click on it and-

Oh. 

That is quite the ugliest chat program you’ve seen since omegle.

But, why in the name cuckledoos, do you already have a stupid account for it?

Did Thomas download this the day before without a note or recording? It seems typical of him to be curious about these things given that he already had an account for it named macabreMissionary.

And it seems he’d set a useless emoticon of Rancorous as his icon of some sort, seemingly in-line with almost all of his other contacts who had ridiculous names.

Except this literal chipper dinger named who dipped with deja-vu, sincerebeanger.

Maybe..?

==>Reginald: Be Jonathan.

You are Jonathan Hale and you’ve just woken up from a horrible nightmare of being chased by a grey trash talking xenomorph to being fed glowing cookies on a comfy computer chair, by Nanasprite.

_How did it fucking come to this?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why does everybody in my god damned fic get sidetracked a lot?? like, bruh.


End file.
